Why didn’t I know about African American female mathematician Katherine Johnson before? Why is fucking America censoring so much of our basic history?
Hidden Figures tells the unbelievable but true story of three African-American female mathematicians working at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They wanted a chance to change their lives; while they were at it, they changed history.
These human “computers,” with help from an early mainframe provided by IBM, created computations that enabled John Glenn to become the first American astronaut to orbit the earth. The 1962 launch of the Mercury capsule Friendship 7 transformed the Space Race, became a symbol of American pride, and led to breakthroughs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics worldwide.
www.ibm.com/…
Katherine Johnson:
At first she worked in a pool of women performing math calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual 'computers who wore skirts.' Their main job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine's knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that, "they forgot to return me to the pool." While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine says she ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before.) She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged.
en.wikipedia.org/…
Dorothy Vaughan:
In 1949, Vaughan became the acting head of the West Area Computers, taking over from a Caucasian woman who died, at a time when racism was still rampant in most of the country. This promotion made her the first Black supervisor at NACA and one of only a few female supervisors. She led a group composed entirely of African-American female mathematicians. It would take years in the role however before she would gain the "official" title of supervisor. This promotion allowed Vaughan to become a proponent for the women in West Computing as well as women in other departments.
en.wikipedia.org/…
Mary Winston Jackson:
The Peninsula recently lost a woman of courage, a most gracious heroine, Mary Winston Jackson. Mary was a champion for her race, other minorities, and women. She suffered many indignities while holding steadfast to her personal attributes and compassion for others. Mary grew up in Hampton, Virginia, graduating with highest honors from high school and received her Bachelor of Science degrees from Hampton Institute in Mathematics and Physical Science. After graduation from college, Mary was a school teacher in Maryland for awhile, then began her long career with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), later National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia.
Mary began her career with NACA as a Computer (as women Mathematicians were known at that time) and was very grateful for the opportunity to serve with this fine organization. She specialized in reducing data from wind tunnel experiments and from actual aircraft data on the many flight experiments NACA was involved with. Her desk was located with other Computers and it wasn’t until many, many years later that she was assigned to work directly with the flight test engineers.
As her career progressed slowly she began to recognize that many minorities and women were not advancing as fast as she thought they should and began analyzing the situation to see what was holding them back. She discovered that occasionally it was something as simple as a lack of a couple of courses, or perhaps the location of the individual, or perhaps the assignments given them, and of course, the ever present glass ceiling that most women seemed to encounter. Mary set about in her very quiet way to advise women of the educational requirements needed to allow their titles to be changed from Mathematician to Engineer and was one of the first to do this. Others followed her lead and the title change led to increased promotion potential.
crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/…
Christine Darden:
Darden was one of several African-American women employed at Langley known as the "West Area Computers." The collective, once tasked with processing scores of collected flight test data, soon garnered a reputation as "human computers" essential to NASA's operation. Despite their noted efficiency, the women were subject to Jim Crow laws even then, and were often required to use separate facilities. Before the group was disbanded, Darden moved up the ranks to become "one of NASA's preeminent experts on supersonic flight and sonic booms," as well as the first African-American woman at Langley to be promoted into senior executive service.
en.wikipedia.org/…
Gloria Champine:
Champine: Yes, but we would have women engineers that would come in with their degrees, and they would be placed in positions of math technicians or mathematicians. They would be put into technical editing. I had one lady with her degree in physics, and they put her as a math aide somewhere, and she ended up as a secretary. When I questioned it, they said, “Well, her degree in physics from William and Mary is not as good as somebody's degree from SUNY [State University of New York] in New York.”
I've always been involved with a lot of stuff, particularly out at NASA. I was giving a speech one time, so I went to the Personnel Office to get information on how they hired and whatever. The personnel officer told me at the time, he says, “We don't know what to do with an educated woman with a degree, nobody wants her.” So we had many secretaries that had their four-year degrees in business management or whatever at that time, and with people like me that broke the barriers they started moving up behind me. Now you have a Director that's a woman, so there's many, many changes that have evolved over the years.
But back in the early days the blacks could not eat in the cafeteria. They would go to a window and get their food and take it back to their desks. Even though they may have had degrees, they were usually math aides. Some with higher degrees might have been a mathematician, and with a title—being with NASA, you know that certain grades go with certain titles, and the promotion potential is so-and-so. So the title with engineer in it gave the guy immediately a promotion potential to a [General Schedule, GS-] 13. With a title of mathematician it gave him the promotion potential to a 12. With a title of something like math aide or editorial or whatever, they were limited at like 7s maybe. So it took a while for women with degrees [to advance].
www.jsc.nasa.gov/…
And a shoutout to:
Margot Lee Shetterly
who wrote Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, which was made into the movie.